Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday August 20, 2009 @04:10PM
from the who'dathunkit dept.

lee1 writes "The first-ever video advertisement will be published in a traditional paper magazine — Entertainment Weekly — in September.
The video will be displayed on slim-line screens
around the size of a mobile phone display and will have rechargeable
batteries. The associated chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video, and uses technology similar to that used in singing greeting cards, playing
the movie when the page is turned. The first clips will preview CBS
shows and advertise Pepsi, but they will only be distributed in Los Angeles and New York.
Imagine the fun hacking possibilities."

How long will it be before someone turns the page in the news paper and Jimbo from Jimbo's Used Cars and Ammo starts screaming about his amazing auto deals (free ammo with every car!) in a VERY LOUD OBNOXIOUS TONE?

I searched in vain for anything in the article that says something about sound. Even if the ad will have audio, I don't think it will last long in that form. From what I understand, the technology to put relatively cheap audio ads in print periodicals has been around for sometime - nobody uses them for a reason. It would make the periodical a menace for any environment where quiet is valued (e.g. doctor's office or library). Pure video, on the other hand, does not suffer from this problem.

Moreover, I'm sure that if they can make a small flexible screen, then can probably also make a small "unmute" button that allows the user to choose to listen to the ad.

I sense that, if this catches on, you'll get a similar problem to cards and other novelty items which make sounds - malfunctions which cause them to NEVER - SHUT - UP!
I had this very experience at a birthday party I was at recently. The novelty candle thingie was cool at first, but no-one could get it to stop playing its cheesy tinny music. It got shut in another room, but we could still hear it... not sure what terrible fate finally silenced it...

How long will it be before someone turns the page in the news paper and Jimbo from Jimbo's Used Cars and Ammo starts screaming about his amazing auto deals (free ammo with every car!) in a VERY LOUD OBNOXIOUS TONE?

The only problem is that, at least in my experience, when I'm sitting down reading and spontaneously start pounding my lap with a hammer everyone looks at me like I've lost my mind. Anyone else have this problem?

So this is the best usage for this technology they can find? How about changing 300lb university textbooks into paper thin alternatives? Updating libraries to use this new technology, increasing the life of the books... etc etc

Whens the last time you can think advertisters have footed the bill? Has the cost of your movie tickets dropped since they've introduced a half-hour of commericals into the movie theaters? Has the cost of your video games dropped since the inception of inline video game ad's?

Hardly. Relying on advertisers to lower the cost of new technology so that academia can reap its benefits is knowledge probably gained from an academic institute that is relying on advertisers to lower the cost of new technology.

Or........ we could look at the fact that the lion's share of the cost of a technology is wrapped into the conceptualization and production of the first unit brought to market.
Then we could look at the fact that the cost of technology decreases as the "new hotness" factor wears off.
Do you see where this is going?

Whens the last time you can think advertisters have footed the bill? Has the cost of your movie tickets dropped since they've introduced a half-hour of commericals into the movie theaters? Has the cost of your video games dropped since the inception of inline video game ad's?

Hardly. Relying on advertisers to lower the cost of new technology so that academia can reap its benefits is knowledge probably gained from an academic institute that is relying on advertisers to lower the cost of new technology.

Except print media relies on ads to pay the bills, The cost you pay tends to pay a very tiny portion of the actual cost production - most of that cost is distribution (printing, shipping to distributors, distributor markup, shipping to retailers, retailer markup, etc), which is how they can easily make subscriptions 50+% off the cover price.

In this case, the ads pay for the technology behind this. If it's successful, more advertisers would want it in more magazines, which implies that developments would make the technology cheaper. And when the technology gets cheap enough, it'll be everywhere.

Advertisers are paying for this, plus the normal ad fees. If it succeeds, it forms a demand for this technology, making it cheaper so everyone else can add video to their pages for little extra cost.

I know this is going waaay off topic, but I beg to differ that modern consumer equipment must be unrepairable.

Oh, I grant you that it is, and that is also something frustrating to me to no end. I'm just suggesting that this is by design, and that some company... if they really want to assert that they are green and not just give lip service... could design equipment to be repaired by an ordinary technician trained at a 2-year community college. Unfortunately that might take more than a simple start-up to

They're the ones paying the bills. I know, how capitalistic of me. But that's the system in play.

How about changing 300lb university textbooks into paper thin alternatives? Updating libraries to use this new technology, increasing the life of the books... etc etc

Fantastic ideas. How soon can we expect for you to get the betas out? The great thing about capitalism is that if think this is a good idea for the technology you can make a play at being one of the first ones to market with the product. Why are you waiting for someone else to take up the cause? If you're waiting for the government to take the lead, which I'm guessing you are by slighting capitalism, you are going to have a long wait.

Capitalism has a really cruddy underside because someone has to lose for someone else to win but it's also this same reason that people step up to challenges such as this. Having an incentive to produce has worked out pretty well. You can still champion the idea if you want to do it for "ethical" reasons and give your profits away. No one is stopping you.

I'm merely making social commentary. I don't wait for the government for anything, and do my own amount of volunteer work around the community. But be rest assured, that if I had the brain capable of inventing a device, good or process of some sort that either

A) benefited the large group of people for free
B) Made me disgustingly rich

I would choose (a). No, I've never been put in that place, and no I don't ask you to believe me.

All I'm really saying is that those who develop a technology should be allowed to get some benefit out of it. That was my social commentary.

And being rich doesn't mean that you can't help a large group of people. There are tons of win-win situations in technology. If I need to list some for you'll I'd have to first ask you to hand in your geek card.

I'm waiting for the lawsuits against people who resell these, hack them, etc.

When one of these ends up on a lamp-post in Brooklyn with a timer on it who will the department of homeland security waterboard? Putting electronics in the hands of terrorists is a serious charge.

Totally baseless of course because bombs don't need fancy timers and a cheap ipod device, like many manufacturers make for almost nothing, could do the same if you wanted a timer, but hey, when has law been about reason?

Well I imagine for news of an add in Entertainment Weekly to trickle all the way down to us nerds, it's got to already be buzztastic in Hollywoodland. Sure it cost them several orders of magnitude more to run the ad, but I bet they will get the same in returns.

I bet this is going to be a collectors item. Everybody in LA and New York will have to buy one. So, not only will EW get a huge sales boost, but there will be millions of people who are pushing, clawing, and begging just to watch the ads for their novelty. How many other ways can you get people to seek out your advertisement rather than have it forced upon them? I bet USA and Pepsi are paying through the nose for this.

Of course, the novelty aspect only works once. My guess is that we won't see this regularly until the technology becomes significantly cheaper (if even then).

You're totally right. I just hope every one of those "panels" gets slapped with a $30+ garbage tax. I'd rather see this kind of "land-fill material (literally) that lasts no more than one week off the shelf" not take off at all.

And let's face it, the vast majority of the readership aren't geeks, so they won't be hacking these things.

And to hell with my karma. It's for garbage like these that I can afford to burn it.

Seems great, but TFA seems light on details that would seem to come to most peoples' minds:

Is it actually an insert into the magazine, or is it part of a page, itself?

How durable is it? And its corollary:

How flexible is it?

Is it always on, or can you turn it off?

Wait, the battery is rechargeable? If this is an ADVERTISEMENT in a paper magazine, why would you want to recharge it beyond the novelty? What good is this, and with a battery of 70min, wouldn't they ALL have no power by the time you get it off the shelf?

Can I rip it out of the magazine and keep the screen/device and repurpose them for something actually useful?

First of all that's 70 minutes of runtime. Standby wouldn't be nearly as draining

I wouldn't expect the standby capacity of that to be much longer than the time it would take insert the device into the magazine, finish production, box up the magazine(s), and ship them to the point of sale. Can you imagine needing dozens upon dozens of USB power cords to recharge these things at your local bookseller? I'd imagine someone is paying for that kind of ridiculous service to ensure that this very expensive advertising venture delivers as promised to the target audience.

The inserts are being distributed to EW subscribers in NY and LA. Newsstands and other subscribers will get regular versions. The success of Video-In-Print could stimulate more widespread video print ads, but as of now, the prohibitive cost of these items (especially compared to traditional motionless ads) prevents wider distribution.

The fools at the Academy for the Slightly Evil laughed at me when I introduced my doctoral dissertation proposal last month, but now look, the winds are shifting in my favor! This is going to go far to aid my goal of getting as many batteries as possible into the landfills that service Los Angeles and New York.

You do know what happens to all those 9V, AA, and AAA batteries you see in grocery stores after people use them up, right? How about the batteries in laptops? Yeah, that's right: the average person throws them away. As in, in the landfill.

If they don't throw them away when they die, they throw them in the trash when they're doing some housecleaning or getting ready to move. Even in the locations where recycling batteries is possible and

Man I am sure a Perl or even more advanced Haskell etc. genious can code today's mainstream newspaper generator easily. Just add couple of leftist/rightist/shadowy columnists who writes no better than your IRC bot, all you need is a A3 printer to go.

I really think it should be done, just to show how worthless they have become internationally, yes, ALL newspapers except always lower selling intellectual types can be generated dynamically. You can even add some sort of "evil layout AI" to promote/demote stori

Okay, the Geek in me wants to take the YouTube Video of this thing, and put it ON this thing, make a video Youtube of the new video on the thing, and then video that and put it on it and then get a video of that, and put it on it....

So now, not only can I not toss the magazine into recycling without a thought, but in many municipalities it will be a crime to even throw it in the regular trash due to the electronics. Thanks Hollywood!

So now, not only can I not toss the magazine into recycling without a thought, but in many municipalities it will be a crime to even throw it in the regular trash due to the electronics. Thanks Hollywood!

It couldn't be repurposed. It was a fixed layout Eink design. Nothing more than an overglorified LCD style animation, similar to those in the Tiger Electronics and Game & Watch systems. Portions became dark, those portions became light. The screen itself couldn't have been salvaged for anything because while it was Eink, it wasn't the kind of Eink that many people hoped it would be (individual granules acting as pixels.)

Let me know when full-motion color video comes to thin, flexible displays. eInk/ePaper isn't there yet and this doesn't even look like it's an advance in that direction, but rather off-the-shelf, conventional rigid LCD repackaged with a small battery and storage as a gimmick. Hardly more innovative than singing birthday cards.

Given how often I see articles claiming that "print media is in trouble, everything's online now", is investing R&D into video advertisements, not to mention increasing printing costs with this gimmick, REALLY the way to go? Are you trying to tell me that the only thing killing print media this whole time has been it's lack of flash ads!?

Yes, the device is supposedly rechargeable and new content can be uploaded, but why would you make the effort to upload ads? How is this better than reading the same info on the internet, on a bigger screen and better interactivity? Whit will surely end in a landfill. How fucking wasteful.

I hate these asshole spammers. I started getting their crap about a year ago. Every damn week, one of these things. I rent a mailbox and only check it about once a month. Now it physically fills up with their unsolicited junk mail. Fuck you, Entertainment Weekly.

I tracked down how it happened. Turns out Ticketmaster sold me out -- they're who Entertainment Weekly got my snailmail address from (and email address, that's how I caught 'em -- Entertainment Weekly sent spam to tm@example.com). So: fuck you too, Ticketmaster. You'll never hear from me again.

Just fold the magazine sharply and firmly in half. No more annoying ad!
Seriously though, if it's possible to erase the ad content and use the mini-player for other video, I think I (and at least half of/.) would buy the mag just to dink around with the player.

Imagine this: A person is quietly reading a magazine in a quiet and peaceful room. Suddenly, as he flips the page, a video advertisement is played, displaying the Pepsi logo, filling the room with a low-quality, low-bitrate sound of the Pepsi jingle so loud everyone in the room turns and looks at him. And, guess what? NO WAY TO STOP THE DAMN AD!

Come September, this will be a reality.

First TV ads got louder and louder and annoyed the shit out of me to the point where I can't even watch TV anymore. Then Internet ads did the same. Now fucking paper ads will annoy me.

I, for one, will not purchase a product whose developers chose to advertise in this manner, nor will I purchase magazines that have these ads. Fuck you, spammers!

The more ads I see, the more I get pissed at advertisement in general.

I have a truly novel idea. Maybe I should patent it. How about we charge for the actual content, save a lot of money on all the staff and equipment that doesn't have to negotiate, draft, implement, print, etc. all the advertisement anymore, and end up with a smaller, more content-dense product? I'll call it "business purpose re-engineering".

You see, when your business has slowly eroded from informing your customers to selling your customers, and your customers have started to notice and are leaving you in droves, it might be time to change back, instead of speeding up.

Are you ready to pay $15-$20 (or more) for an issue that used to cost you $6, purely for the privilege of not having ads?

Yes

Do you think >90% of consumers are?

No.

But if you want my money, you play by my rules. That other 90% market is pretty much saturated anyways. So why not get a large share of the 10% market, instead of a tiny share of the 90% market? Your overal market share may end up to be higher.

But, of course, in this time of hyper-capitalism, nobody is happy with owning a factory or a shop or selling to a specific audience anymore. It's got to be international corporations, franchises and chains and when it comes to market, the key word is "dominatin